The Other Wife

The Face of Ulises

PENÉLOPE

I had forgotten Ulises's face over time.

After being forced to carry out household chores, despite his army of employees ready to serve him, I had somewhat found peace in following his demands to the letter.

Every morning, I would wake up at six o'clock to prepare his breakfast. I would leave it on the table with the menu that I instructed Gloria, the housekeeper, to give me weekly. I had to weigh his food because he was on a strict diet, and many times, I found the food in the trash since it was rare for him to eat.

I lived in that house, but he spent so much time working that I stopped seeing him after a few days. I didn't even have a single photo of him. I was completely locked up and cut off from the world. All I could do was prepare his food.

Two weeks had passed when Ulises finally showed up at the house in the afternoon.

"Penelope! Penelope!" I heard his shouts. I had left him food, and I wasn't willing to go to him every time he called me as if I were a lapdog.

"Damn it, Penelope, come here!"

I ignored him. He should leave me alone. The door to my room opened abruptly.

"I was about to leave you some sapphire and emerald earrings, but it seems you haven't fulfilled all your duties," he said through gritted teeth. "If my clothes aren't clean, forget about the rewards."

"As you wish, darling," I said with feigned sweetness. i***t.

I took a deep breath, holding back my crazy urge to kick him in the balls and run away from there, but it wasn't an easy task. I had to be smart, and for that, I had to stick to the plan. Earn as many jewels as possible, so I could give him that kick he deserved.

I started to devote myself entirely to him. I kept his room clean, his clothes tidy, and his food exactly as he requested. In exchange for being "a good wife," he sometimes left me flowers and sugar-free chocolates for my progress. However, the day I looked forward to the most was Sundays.

Every Sunday, I received a note telling me that I still had a long way to go to be a good wife, but he compensated me with precious stones and expensive jewelry as an incentive for "my effort." The jewels didn't compensate for my melancholy of wanting to see the sunlight outside that enormous house that seemed like my golden cage, but they gave me some hope of one day getting out of there.

"I would like to go out," I told the housekeeper one day while eating with her in the kitchen. I refused to eat alone in the dining room or risk Ulises arriving one day and finding me there, demanding duties in bed which I didn't want to do.

"Ma'am, you know we can't do that. If the master sees us breaking the rules, we could lose our jobs," Gloria was the only person I sat down to talk to in that house.

"Come on, Gloria, I just want to go out for a while. Since I arrived at this house months ago, I haven't been able to see anything else, just these four walls while he treats me like a servant instead of his wife. I swear I won't go anywhere," I said.

"The boss won't be back until night," Gloria took a sip of her water. "Alright, but it will only be for an hour. Where do you want to go?"

An hour later, we were at the nearest shopping mall to the house. The first thing I went to see was the jewelry, which had become my passion during my confinement. In the end, Gloria ended up buying me a couple of books that talked about the types of jewelry, their designs, and the most iconic jewels of all time.

We returned home an hour later, and I was immensely grateful to Gloria for risking taking me out of that hole. At least I knew the world hadn't changed.

"Thank you for risking yourself for me, Gloria," I thanked her before getting to work in the kitchen for Ulises's dinner.

"It will be our secret."

Once I finished dinner, I locked myself in my room to browse through my books. I discovered the names of precious stones and began to investigate more about them, learning how to tell when they were fake and when they were genuine. With the jewels I had been collecting over the passing weeks, I had started to practice. Gloria helped me acquire some jeweler's tools to do so.

As the days passed, I decided to leave a note for Ulises in his room asking him for a one-carat serendibite ring, a rare precious stone considered one of the most expensive in the world. The next Sunday, he left it for me as a reward for cleaning all his shoes. Upon examining it, I realized, according to what I had researched, that it was an authentic gem.

That's how I started asking him for some books on geology and some other things related to jewelry.

Ulises's face was fading from my mind, replaced by images of jewels that I had started asking for them to collect. It had been a long time since I had seen him. I had learned to deal with him; every time he asked me to fulfill my duties as a wife, by message, I would add laxatives to his food, or a bottle of wine, seeing that he wouldn't stop drinking until he fell asleep and then undress him, so he would think he had spent the night with me.

After a day of washing and ironing his clothes, I decided one afternoon to prepare dinner early and soak in the tub for a bath, while reading about the polishing of jewels and their process of being found on the earth. When my phone rang, it was the first time Ulises had called me after six months of not hearing from him other than leaving messages in his room with the jewels I wanted on Sunday.

"Are you at home?" he immediately asked without even greeting.

"Where else would I be?" I asked. It was obvious that I couldn't leave without his consent.

He hung up the phone, not counting on the fact that five minutes later, he was bursting into the bathroom of my room. He went straight to me to pull me by the arm and force me out. He threw a towel at me while looking out the window.

"Dry off right now and grab whatever you can, because we have to leave right now," Ulises ordered. I began to dry myself in a hurry, as I didn't know what he had in mind and the way he was reacting only made me more nervous.

I had never seen Ulises so desperate to leave.

"What's going on?" I rushed to put on some underwear, and the first clothes I found were a floral suit set and some white sneakers.

"Penelope, we have to leave now," Ulises hurried me.

I left the bathroom to grab the cloth bag with the jewels I had collected. I put them in the bag I hung over my shoulder. Ulises pushed me out the door. As we ran down the hallway straight to the foyer, where his car was running. I didn't understand anything of what was happening.

"Get in," he ordered as he ran to the driver's side.

I obeyed.

"Can you tell me where we're going and why in this way?" I asked as I struggled because the trembling fingers of my hands wouldn't let me fasten my seat belt.

"If you want to live, we have to leave here. We're being followed, and this house is no longer safe for you or me."

That night, I fled with Ulises undercover as we ran for our lives, and I had no idea what was going on.